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Tutorial "How to batch process hand held pole panoramas"

Stitching a series of pole panoramas can take a long time but if you have a steady hand and take care of your shadow in the images then batch stitching is a real option to save you a lot of time.
Batch stitching is possible as long as all images are having a large overlap and are having enough details, for this reason I prefer not to use a zenith or nadir patch as these most times requires a manual intervention.

I wrote a tutorial with screenshots, demo images and PTGui templates to give you a quick start.

For the tutorial I used one set of images that are part of a small series of handheld and batch processed pole panoramas.
All panoramas are shot with a Fanotec Series 1 pole, R1 lens ring, R-D4 rotator, footplate, Canon 5D, Tokina 10-17@14.5mm, 6 images around, tilt-15 degree, out of NPP forward shift of the lens 12 mm.
No post processing on the output is done.

well done. This will encourage a lot of guys to go on shooting on monopod and pole. Thx a lot for sharing. Plus to take the time to show the"advantages of snow" in NL. With the sun coming out. Thx a lot to take your time to share this with the forum.

Some questions to get things clear:

the set up is R1 with camera lens ring on top. R1 including RD4 rotator? Or did you split R1 to use it on top of pole and use the RD4 rotator at the bottom of the pole? The footplate fixed to the pole? Did you use all segments of the pole?

To explain "out of NPP forward shift of the lens 12mm" to the forum members : This is useful to get the pole in wages. Using the NPP, the weight of camera lens combination is out of wages and sets a torque to the pole. The pole is bending. Moving the lens ring forward to the center of the pole, will minimize bending and combined with -15º tilt will result in a smaller nadir.

Thanks for the compliments. I will try to answer and clarify some things.

Originally Posted by hindenhaag

...the set up is R1 with camera lens ring on top. R1 including RD4 rotator? Or did you split R1 to use it on top of pole and use the RD4 rotator at the bottom of the pole? The footplate fixed to the pole? Did you use all segments of the pole?...

The R1 is split from the R-D4 rotator, at the R1 a Fanotec mini QuickMount adapter is mounted to attach the R1 on the pole. The rotator is mounted to the bottom of the pole and to a footplate with spikes.
All tubes of the pole are extended to get the max height possible, in this setup the lens height is approx. 2.9 m. I didn't mentioned it in my posting but for leveling the pole I use a R1 external bubble level and an adapter ring. The level is easy to read and sturdy mounted at the pole.

To explain "out of NPP forward shift of the lens 12mm" to the forum members : This is useful to get the pole in wages. Using the NPP, the weight of camera lens combination is out of wages and sets a torque to the pole. The pole is bending. Moving the lens ring forward to the center of the pole, will minimize bending and combined with -15º tilt will result in a smaller nadir.

True, the backwards bending of the pole will reduce a bit when the center of the gravity is moved closer to the center of the pole, however this is not the main reason for shifting the lens forwards. Without shifting the lens forwards out of NPP the top of the R1 with mini QuickMount will make a footprint, not a large one, approx. 10-15 degree depending on your lens and NPP setting, but by shifting the lens forward this footprint will be reduced to just 4-5 degree, in fact the footprint is that small that fingers around the pole are visible.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family.

Thanks Heinz, I wish you and all Nodal Ninja Forum members a happy X-Mas and a very good 2011.
Any chance that we will meet at the PanoToools Meeting 2011 in Vienna ?

Stitching a series of pole panoramas can take a long time but if you have a steady hand and take care of your shadow in the images then batch stitching is a real option to save you a lot of time.
Batch stitching is possible as long as all images are having a large overlap and are having enough details, for this reason I prefer not to use a zenith or nadir patch as these most times requires a manual intervention.

I wrote a tutorial with screenshots, demo images and PTGui templates to give you a quick start.

For the tutorial I used one set of images that are part of a small series of handheld and batch processed pole panoramas.
All panoramas are shot with a Fanotec Series 1 pole, R1 lens ring, R-D4 rotator, footplate, Canon 5D, Tokina 10-17@14.5mm, 6 images around, tilt-15 degree, out of NPP forward shift of the lens 12 mm.
No post processing on the output is done.